Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Length: 272 pages
First Published: 2020
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Publisher’s Description
Antonia Vega, the immigrant writer at the center of Afterlife, has had the rug pulled out from under her. She has just retired from the college where she taught English when her beloved husband, Sam, suddenly dies. And then more jolts: her bighearted but unstable sister disappears, and Antonia returns home one evening to find a pregnant, undocumented teenager on her doorstep. Antonia has always sought direction in the literature she loves—lines from her favorite authors play in her head like a soundtrack—but now she finds that the world demands more of her than words.
Afterlife is a compact, nimble, and sharply droll novel. Set in this political moment of tribalism and distrust, it asks: What do we owe those in crisis in our families, including—maybe especially—members of our human family? How do we live in a broken world without losing faith.
About Julia Alvarez
Julia Alvarez is a poet, author and essayist. Her novels include How the García Girls Lost their Accents, In the Time of the Butterflies, The Cemetery of Untold Stories, and Afterlife. Born in New York, she was raised in the Dominican Republic. She currently lives on a farm outside Middlebury, Vermont. Visit the author’s website →
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